I stalked across the room and shoved the massive doors open with a scowl. I had to put my shoulder into it, which meant the average human would need to be let in from the other side. I stood between the parted doors for a long moment, breathing deep and slow, taking in the view.
Interior lights blazed the entire width and breadth of the many-terraced club and there was that duality again: CHESTER’S WAS LIT! competing with What else did that bastard copy of mine? I, too, had white leather and chrome chairs in my foyer, next to my charcoal console. I’d stolen them from some rich guy’s penthouse. I enjoyed decorating because I’d never gotten to do it before and I see things in structures and patterns, and decorating is a way of arranging things to achieve maximum visual happiness. If his kitchen had been remodeled with my counters and back splash, he was dead. Death might be brief for him, but temporary was enough to make me feel better.
Urban sophistication wed to industrial muscle, Chester’s was London haute couture slumming with Irish mob in the best possible way. The club was divided into countless tiered subclubs that would soon be filled to overflowing again. When the world goes to hell, people party. They need to. Who am I kidding? I need to. It spring-cleans my brain, refreshes it like a blast of detritus-removing sanitizer. The days look brighter, saner, after you’ve spent a night pretending the world hasn’t gone mad and that you’re on top of it—especially if you finish it off on top of a worthy man, too, not that I’ve had any luck finding one of those since Dancer.
Dancer. Hole in my heart that never goes away. I miss him always, especially when I’m in a location owned by a man he and I used to conspire against together endlessly.
I’d once despised Chester’s, convicted Ryodan of catering to the wrong clientele. I see the place differently now.
As an asset.
The nightclub being reopened would give people a choice. Elyreum was the only club in town packed to the gills with dangerous thrills, its appeal the lethally exotic, sexually combustive Fae with their illusion, lies, and false offers of immortality.
But Chester’s would offer an equally seductive draw: the immortal, basely sexual, mysterious, ferociously alpha Nine. And if a few Unseelie princes like Christian MacKeltar and Sean O’Bannion started hanging around again?
Chester’s would obliterate Elyreum.
I’d even let Inspector Jayne in, he’d be a significant lure. And the more humans that came to party here, the more Fae from Elyreum would come sniffing around, drawn by the banquet of mortal prey. Why was that good?
We’d have control again.
We’d know what was going on. People get drunk and tongues wag in clubs, they reveal things they shouldn’t. The disadvantage of being banned from Elyreum was the only info I’d ever been able to obtain on the current state of Faery came from people I questioned on the streets, and few were willing to tell me a bloody thing. I’d begun to suspect my picture hung in Elyreum’s bathrooms with a block-lettered caption: DO NOT TALK TO THIS BITCH OR WE’LL KILL YOU. With the exception of Jayne, I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Fae in…good grief, over a year? They were studiously avoiding me, for which I’d been grateful, given the perpetually itchy state of my sword hand.
Oh, yes, I got it now: offer to host your enemies, let them misbehave, pass no judgment. Yes, there’s a price for it, you have to watch prey get preyed upon, but—and it’s a critical but—chance favors the prepared mind; intimate knowledge of the enemy prepares. I’m all about increasing odds of success where the human race is concerned.
I saw Chester’s now as I’d never been able to see it before: a vast, complicated, ever-shifting, treacherous, necessary chessboard. The White army was definitely going to lose pawns, nothing could be done about that. But their loss might gain the Black king’s head, and checkmate the war. The moment White got distracted, trying to protect pawns, the Black army would go in for the kill and take White’s king.
I glanced down at the dance floors, to the elegant, wide, glass and chrome staircase that swept up to one of the many private, never-accessible-by-public levels of the club, where Ryodan’s glass office was located.
In spite of my pissy mood, I smiled.
Fade and Kasteo were in position at the bottom, arms folded, legs splayed wide, two handsome, towering, scarred immortal bouncers.
The Nine were home.
I basked in the simple pleasure of that fact for a moment.
Then my smile was obliterated by a scowl. They were guarding the same notorious staircase from which the notorious Ryodan used to give his notorious nod every morning.
I knew the legend. Women never refused.
Saw. Off. Head.
I dragged my gaze from the stairs and continued scanning the club. Hundreds of laborers mulled about the interior, dismantling bars and snugs, prepping for renovations. I was pleased to see the kiddie subclub was already demolished. I couldn’t look at it without thinking of Jo. Apparently Ryodan couldn’t either. Nor, I’d bet, did Lor much like it anymore. Besides, it reminded me, too, of that day Ryodan had saved my life by shoving me on an elevator, sacrificing himself to fling my cabled car up to safety. I’d thanked him by slaughtering everyone in the kiddie subclub while he was out of commission. Done it to deliberately wreck his good name with the patrons he’d guaranteed safety within his walls.
I’d endangered his chessboard. No wonder he’d been so angry with me. I’d nearly cost him the information that gave him the ability to control the Nine’s world, affect the world beyond it.
God, it seemed so long ago! It was a vastly different time.
A vastly different me.
I’d believed myself large and in charge in my teens, and I’d been out of control, indulging my desires without once considering their potential consequences. Here, in Chester’s, I’d had a brutal epiphany at fourteen, come to understand my actions had ramifications. I’d glimpsed, for the first time, the boats I’d left capsized in my wake, occupants flailing in the water as I blasted across the whitecaps of Dublin’s stormy sea.
I stood a moment, letting memories wash over me, then shook them briskly off.
I was glad to see the club reopening. I was not, however, glad to see its erstwhile owner.
I narrowed my eyes as I realized I didn’t see its erstwhile owner.
Anywhere.
Where was he? I had a bone the size of a Patagotitan’s femur to pick with him.
My hands were so tightly fisted, the nails of my right hand had drawn blood. My gloved left was cold as ice and itching ferociously.
As I pushed forward through the open doors, I felt them fall in behind me, one on each side. I didn’t even need to turn around.
Two of the Nine had been standing behind the doors on either side, and I’d not sensed them through the foot-thick steel that, I was willing to bet, was coated with the mysterious alloy Ryodan likes to use.